No. 3068

Omelet Stuffed with Strawberries

Omelette Fourree aux Fraises

Pick about forty large, ripe and very fresh strawberries; select twenty of the finest ones and cut them in four, then place them in a bowl with sugar, a piece of orange peel and two spoonfuls of rum; keep them in a cool place. Press the remainder of the strawberries through a fine sieve and put the pulp into a bowl to sweeten and also lay on ice. Break seven or eight eggs in a vessel, mix in two soup spoonfuls of sugar, two soup spoonfuls of good cream, a few small bits of butter and a grain of salt; beat up well. Heat some fresh butter in a pan, pour in the beaten eggs and stir with a fork until they thicken; when the omelet detaches from the pan bring it forward and fill it with the cut-up strawberries without any of the liquid and turn it over with one stroke on a long dish. Give it a pretty shape, besprinkle with powdered vanilla sugar (No. 3165), glaze with a red hot iron three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter and surround with the puree, into which should be incorporated the liquid from the quartered strawberries.

← No. 3067 Omelet Stuffed with Preserves—Glazed Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3069 Omelet with Fruits, Meringued →

For the Modern Kitchen

A sweet French omelet, rolled rather than folded, with macerated strawberries inside and a raw strawberry purée around it. Everything hinges on the eggs staying soft.

The hinge: do not overcook the eggsThe omelet should still be creamy in the centre when it leaves the pan, since it continues to set on the hot dish. Ranhofer's "stir with a fork until they thicken" means brief cooking over moderate heat with no browning; he gives no time.
Soup spoonfulIn Ranhofer's usage a soup spoonful is roughly a tablespoon. So about 2 tablespoons sugar and 2 tablespoons cream for seven or eight eggs.
Quantities and yieldForty large strawberries is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb. Seven or eight eggs makes one large omelet for three or four; two smaller omelets of four eggs each are easier to roll than one big one.
Macerating the fruitTwenty quartered berries with sugar, a strip of orange peel and two spoonfuls of rum. Ranhofer says only to keep them in a cool place; half an hour or so chilled will do. Drain them well before filling — the recipe specifies filling "without any of the liquid," and wet fruit will tear the omelet and thin the eggs.
The purée is uncookedThe remaining twenty berries are sieved raw and sweetened, so this is a fresh coulis, not a cooked sauce. Make it the same day and keep it cold; a blender and the fine sieve the recipe calls for will do the work.
Vanilla sugarNo. 3165 is Ranhofer's own vanilla sugar entry, not reproduced here. Period vanilla sugar was made either by keeping split pods in fine sugar until it took the scent or by pounding the pod with sugar and sifting; either will serve.
Glazing with a hot ironThe 3/16-inch rod, heated red in the fire, was drawn across the sugared surface to caramelize parallel lines. A kitchen blowtorch does the job; a metal skewer heated over a gas flame will trace the traditional stripes if you want the pattern.
PanA well-seasoned or nonstick 10-inch pan with sloping sides. The "turn it over with one stroke" is a roll out of the pan onto the platter, seam underneath.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that restaurant's repertoire, which is why the entry cross-references numbered recipes rather than describing the vanilla sugar in place. Sweet omelets belonged to the entremets course — dishes served after the roast and before or in place of a formal dessert — and a run of them appears here in sequence: stuffed with preserves, stuffed with strawberries, meringued with fruits. The strawberry version depends on the fruit being at its short seasonal peak, since the purée is never cooked; a dish like this on a New York menu was a marker of late spring and of a kitchen with money to spend. Glazing sugar with a red-hot iron rod was the standard method in professional kitchens before the handheld torch, and the same tool was used to mark cross-hatching on meringues and glazed puddings.